The King and the Saint Against the Scots: the Shaping of English

The King and the Saint against the Scots 85 Chapter 5 The King and the Saint against the Scots: The Shaping of English National Identity in the 12th Century Narrative of King Athelstan’s Victory over His Northern Neighbours Tomasz Tarczyński The subject of our analysis will be a fragment of an anonymous, twelfth-century collection of miracula of an Anglo-Saxon saint – St John of Beverley.1 One of the miracles attributed to St John, the first one in the collection in ques- tion, was his supernatural assistance in the struggle between the Anglo-Saxon king, Athelstan, and the Scots. According to the hagiographic legend the inter- cession of the saint bishop tilted victory to Athelstan, who was thus successful in the war against the Scots and eventually conquered their kingdom. What is important for us – and this is the main thesis of this paper – is that the anonymous hagiographer supplemented his narrative with details which in the 13th and 14th centuries were used as an ideological tool in defining Anglo-Scottish relations and therefore constituted part of English identity.2 1 Miracula Sancti Johannis Episcopus Eboracensis. Alia Miracula I, eds. Gottfried Henschen, Daniel Paperbroch, Acta Sanctorum Quotquot Toto Orbe Coluntur, Vel A Catholicis Scriptoribus Celebrantur ex Latinis et Graecis, Alairumque Gentium Antiquis Monumentis Collecta, Digesta, Illustrata (Paris and Rome, 1866) [Henceforth Acta Sanctorum], 180-184. For an extensive study on the life and tradition of St. John of Beverley and the translation of the text see Susan E. Wilson, The Life and After-Life of St. John of Beverley: The Evolution of the Cult Of An Anglo- Saxon Saint (Bodmin, 2006); Susan E. Wilson, “King Athelstan and St John of Beverley,” in Northern History 40 (2003) 5-23, passim. 2 For the texts using the legend as a proof of English sovereignty over Scotland see: Documents and Records Illustrating the History of Scotland, and the Transactions between the Crowns of Scotland and England, Preserved in The Treasury of Her Majesty’s Exchequer, vol. I ed. Francis Palgrave (London, 1838) 115-199; “Letter of King Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII,” in Anglo- Scottish Relations 1174-1328. Some Selected Documents, ed. and trans.: Edward L.G. Stones (Oxford, 1970) 192-219. On the historical argumentation in Anglo-Scottish conflict: James R. Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Lincoln-London, 1993) chapters 2-3, 57-103; Dauvit Broun, Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain (Edinburgh, 2007) 38-46, 52; Edward I and the Throne of Scotland 1290-1296. v. I – Introduction eds. Edward L.G. Stones, Grant G. Simpson, (Oxford, 1978) ch. VI, 137-162; Mathew Fisher, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004363793_006 86 Tarczyński One of those narrative details, the one on which we will focus, is the descrip- tion of the origins of the special relations between St. John of Beverley and the kings of England, and simultaneously of their visual sign. This particular object – St. John’s banner – became one of the focuses of English national identity, used particularly in the context of conflicts with the Scots. The story thus creates a physical object of remembrance and, at the same time, of the ideology of English conquest and rule. Before we venture forth, and start our analysis, we need to explain one more thing. One of the most recurrent words in this paper, and indeed in the whole volume, is the word ‘identity’. For us, the notion of identity refers to the ability of a group to define itself in terms of its distinctiveness and relations with others displayed (not only, but mostly) through historical narratives and, to use Pierre Nora’s term, the common ‘places of group’s memory’. Those ‘places’, we understand, are both the narratives produced, and as is the case with texts cited in this paper, used in political conflicts as ‘hard evidence’ of the group distinctiveness, its laws and political position, and the items which, according to those same narratives, constituted the physical representation of the same ideas. Thus, the notion of identity is for us closely connected with the second widely discussed idea – that of the community. The sense of belonging to the same group, expressed through the participation in specific social practices and the usage of the same objects, inevitably leads to the discussion of identity. The imag- ined connection between the members of the community, as expressed though its historiographical narratives forms the core of what we call identity. … Saint John of Beverley, the main character of the Miracula, was the bishop of Hexham from 687 to 706 and then bishop of York between 706 and 717. After his retirement from the bishopric he became abbot of the Benedictine monas- tery which he founded in Beverley, where he died on 7th May 721.3 St John was also the teacher of the Venerable Bede whose Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum is the first narrative source to mention, and praise, the bishop and “Genealogy Rewritten: Inheriting the Legendary in Insular Historiography”, in Broken Lines. Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France, eds. R. Radulescu, E.D. Kennedy (Turnhout, 2008). 3 Wilson, “King Athelstan and St John of Beverley,” 5; D.M. Palliser, “John of Beverley [St John of Beverley] (d. 721),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) [<http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/14845>, accessed 12 Feb 2014]; Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of The English People, eds. Bertram Colgrave, Roger A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1979) 468..

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